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FTC Roundtable on the Economics of Internet Auctions
October 27, 2005
70 pages - .pdf format - see attachment if interested..
-Jim
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That made me want to stab my eyeballs out with an icepick.
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You to huh?
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Is it anywhere in non-PDF format? My computer setttings are very restrictive (but saved me a lot of security hassles since I set them this way). The only one I could find on Google was also not cached in HTML.
Cheers, Kevin
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http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ma...870571033.aspx
Kevin, I haven't tried any of them, but there are pdf converters. This one converts to Word format.
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Looks to me as though the real problem with that presentation is that it is a power-point type presentation, not a research paper with clearly written results/conclusions. The only conclusions available are not presented in English, just in charts/graphs with formulas not really accessible to most of us. Are they really trying to figure out if a true competitor to ebay would/could make a real difference? Couldn't prove it by me.
Just pulling out a couple of potentially interesting ideas from the paper:
I did think the contrast in the seller costs being a straight line (increasing at the same rate no matter how many widgets were offered for sale) vs. the exponential increase charts were interesting. Clearly there is a point at which getting 'bigger' is counterproductive either way but it sure comes a lot faster with the exponential increase. lol and duh. (This was not the point of the paper, but I thought it was interesting to see it in this way, none-the-less.)
Maybe ebay has come to the same conclusion that reducing fees a little bit for sellers will increase their participation (witness the lack of 'free' listing days in the last year or so) whereas a larger reduction in fees doesn't make a proportionally larger increase in seller participation.
I found the Observation #7 interesting:
From the anti-trust perspective, there are (sic) both good news and bad news.
Good News: Monopolists may not be able to extract much surplus or cause big distortions.
Bad News: Predation may be a profitable strategy and a concern in these markets. Once the competitor is pushed out, the surviving firm can monopolize price subject to no constraints.
So can anyone here give us the rundown on what this means for a seller or even for an ebay competitor? I can't believe that the duopoly stuff is now or could be anything but a conjecture. (Well, I guess Google maybe could manage it if they could figure out a way to change the rules somehow)
Elaine (who obviously needs more caffeine... ETA: especially after re-reading that title: Pricing and Competition Between Heterogeneous Auction Sites--yeah right. What kind of alternate universe do those folks live in?? Maybe it's an attempt to figure out a way to get an advanced degree in econ while indulging in your online auction habit...)
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It just amazes me that discussions on this plane occur. No wonder I can't figure out how to program my VCR.